dinosaurbbq
2nd String
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2011
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I was lucky enough to go to watch the game live and I'm glad I did. Beautiful weather and a great game to watch for an SU fan, not so much for a Wake fan. Luckily enough, there were plenty there for SU and not so many for Wake. I would guess the crowd was darn near 50/50 for SU and Wake and definitely was more SU than Wake by the fourth quarter with most Wake fans leaving early. This is a really small stadium at 31,500 capacity and it was well less than half full. Post game Syracusefan.com tailgate looked great and lots of people to celebrate with. I'd brought my 7 year old boy with me and he was exhausted from getting up early to travel to the game, so sorry we couldn't stay to enjoy it.
I've now also watched the game on TV, which confirmed most of my thoughts live.
Special Teams: News flash-- we need a special teams coach! The first punt we received after Wake's first quick 3 and out -- the guy next to me (Im4cuse) and I both noticed and mentioned Gulley was 10 yards too deep given that Wake's punter was punting against a pretty strong wind and sure enough the kick came in 15 yards short of Gulley. We actually were very lucky the short man fell down and the punt luckily bounced right into his hands as he was laying on the ground. This positioning failure continued. PTG was way too short the next quarter when the Wake punter had the wind, too deep when he was punting against the wind. Cost us 50 yards of field position easy. I have to think if we had a special teams coach those things would have been noticed and pointed out to the players. It's like the difference between a baseball coach moving his defenders around in the infield and outfield based on the hitter or leaving his players in the field to decide where to position themselves.
Our kick returns, both punt and kickoff, were terrible. First kickoff, Erv took at the 3 and ran directly into his blocker yet again and was downed at the 15. I love Erv and he's shown some swivel on runs and after catching a pass, but he can't and shouldn't be returning kickoffs. I've seen him run into his blockers time and time again now and he's also made bad decisions on whether to field and return the kick or down it in the endzone. I think he needs coaching both on not running into his blockers and on his decision whether to bring it out.
PTG got lucky on the punt he dropped by getting bailed out with a penalty halo violation call. At the game, Im4cuse and I were sure he had called for the fair catch, maybe just because it was so obvious he should have, but on tv he clearly didn't. Basically he caught he ball and was hit almost immediately and fumbled it. I don't think it was a halo violation, but the defender hit him so quick after the attempted catch, that it looked ugly and resulted in a flag. That is why they implemented the fair catch, buddy. Use it!
We didn't come close to getting any significant yards on kick returns. I can't wait to get Brisley Estime back there.
On the other side of the ball, we were equally bad and ineffective. Wake nearly blocked two punts. The one at the end of the first half was really close and we got lucky and got it off and downed it at the 2. Worked out ok, but bad punt protection has been a problem all year. Wake also had a couple of returns that looked like they might break it for a TD and consistently got significant return yards. Wake started out with better field position than we did almost all game, with the exception of their early long TD drive and the drive at the end of the first half where we downed it at the 2. We need to improve kick coverage fast.
All of those are coaching issues. Special teams wins and loses games, just as Virginia Tech. It can't be split up between all coaches generally without hurting us and that should be clear.
On the bright side, Cole Murphy is a legit FG kicker and it's taken us a while to find one. Great job Cole!
Defense
First drive three and out and the Wake starting QB was scared and ended up with a couple tipped passes and lots of pressure. Second drive-- the 92 yard TD-- more pressure early and again the Wake QB was playing scared with inaccurate passes. He then hit one over the middle and Welsh hits him pretty late for the personal foul and 15 yards. On tv, it was clear it was a good call. That actually seemed to settle down their QB and he then threw a nice pass for a long gain right after. He had a few more nice passes on the rest of that drive for first downs and they moved downfield methodically for the TD, again on a pretty decent TD pass.
After that long TD drive, Wake got nothing done. Total of 78 more yards through the remaining 3 1/2 quarters. There were actually three decently long runs in there and a whole lot of wasted plays.
Early on, we blitzed a lot less than normal. We got decent pressure with just 4, but again they moved the ball 92 yards for the TD. I would guess the staff was testing to see what kind of pressure we could get without blitzing for future game purposes before going back to it.
We dialed up the blitzes in the 2nd quarter and it paid off. In the second quarter Dyshawn Davis crushed Woolford with that backside blitz resulting in the Welsh INT for a TD and knocking Woolford out for the game. We then continued to blitz the second stringer and absolutely terrorized him. The second quarter play with two almost sacks and finally the intentional grounding was beautiful to watch. In the 3rd quarter Raymon crushed the backup QB and the fumble bounced right into Micah Robinson's hands for a second defensive TD.
Zaire Franklin got his name called a bunch in the 3rd and 4th quarters with great play. On one play in particular at the end of the 3rd, I noticed how fast he was chasing down their backup QB. Their QB was limping before that play so he wasn't really fast, but Franklin also was way faster than two other defenders also trying to chase him down.
Offense
AJ made a lot of decent passes. Still had a couple bad throws, but overall much, much more accurate than Hunt has been. Long got pressured and didn't get flustered. Another freshman mistake when he threw to a triple covered WR in the second quarter and it went for an incompletion. Little chance of success there but all the defenders were actually playing short and he could have lofted that ball over the top and completed it if he'd put some air under it. One planned run for Long, not like how many there were for Hunt, but Long is a much faster and better runner than Hunt is. Obviously due to his slender frame as compared to Hunt and the lack of back up options in particular today probably. Long had multiple chances to run for decent gains and didn't take them instead staying back and throwing decent passes. Both times he did run for big yards, the first TD and a decent first down gain, were after getting flushed out of the pocket. He looked great on those runs.
Mitch Kimble even got in at the end to hand it off 6 times. Man, why not let the kid throw one pass?
Online blocked pretty well all game for a banged up and shuffled unit. There was a little pressure on Long but not much.
McFarlane had a great game, mostly due to one long run of 86 yards. How did he possibly get run down and why did he not taper toward the sideline? Whatever, he doubled our run total with than one and finished with 114 on 10 runs on the day. He actually made good cuts and found holes on several runs. GMII got a couple chances and did nothing with them. I loved that kid last year and couldn't wait to see what he'd do this year. He hasn't done anything with his chances this year at all and it looks like McFarlane and Erv have both overtaken him. PTG did ok with his touches and AAM barely played.
Ishmael is a huge talent addition and changes games. He made some tough catches even in traffic knowing he'd pay the price for it. The best we've had here since well before Mike Williams IMHO.
Parris made a great one handed grab late, albeit for a loss that would have worked out better if he'd dropped it. It's good to see him involved in the offense a bit. He had two in the game as I remember. I'm still shocked they don't send the TE (Parris or Custis) on a vertical seem route, but these coaches know a lot more than I do about scheming football plays.
West got thrown to in the first quarter in the end zone on third down from the 15 and on TV I noticed it wasn't that bad a throw and could have been caught. West put one hand up and it glanced off. The throw was coming in fast, but wasn't out of reach and West could have had two hands on it and actually caught it. It looked from Long's looks around the field that West was the third target in the progression. It looked like West just didn't expect the throw maybe and gave it a really half-assed effort. I'd hate to think all WR don't expect any given ball to come to them due to not being primary receiver, but I kind of think that is what happened with West there.
Our WR are all blocking much better the last couple weeks. It may be that GMD has more time and is taking more time to teach the WR proper technique. Huge improvement and if that is why, good on GMD.
No easy catches dropped either. Morris should have caught the pass on the jet sweep at the 5 yard line and maybe would have scored on it, but he short armed it and didn't get a hand on it. On tv it was clear he heard footsteps. Long led him beautifully on it. West dropped what would have been a tough catch in the 3rd quarter along the sideline at about the 30 yardline that could have gone for a TD as well as the pass in the endzone referenced above. Given what I've seen so far, I would expect Ishmael to make both those West missed catches, which is a beautiful thing to have on offense.
The flag for a pick play TD on the next play was ridiculous. On TV it was clear Flemming didn't come near physical contact with the defender and actually the two defenders basically ran into each other. The announcer is a fool for saying they needed to be less obvious about it. Fantastic throw by Long too.
More false start Penalties early. Why is that still happening here? Shafer said in his interview at the end of the first half that it's a frosh QB with some young linemen filling in and just an issue with verbiage. What was the problem then leading up to the FSU game? We'll see. If it stops here, good. If not, it's systemic.
Wake apparently has a fifth year senior named Zach Allen. Watching it on tv, I cringed every time I heard his name.
Finally, there was a big waste of ten minutes in the 3rd quarter when West caught a ball over the middle then fumbled it after hitting the turf. On TV it was clearly a catch then fumble after hitting the turf. Wake fans were yelling pretty loud about it, but the funny thing is no Wake player touched West at any time in the play. Couldn't have been a fumble. Funniest thing was on tv watching the goofy coach with the headset on (Clawson I think) running on the field down the sideline with the Wake defender all the way to the endzone. Get the off the field!!!
Nice to meet many of you!
I've now also watched the game on TV, which confirmed most of my thoughts live.
Special Teams: News flash-- we need a special teams coach! The first punt we received after Wake's first quick 3 and out -- the guy next to me (Im4cuse) and I both noticed and mentioned Gulley was 10 yards too deep given that Wake's punter was punting against a pretty strong wind and sure enough the kick came in 15 yards short of Gulley. We actually were very lucky the short man fell down and the punt luckily bounced right into his hands as he was laying on the ground. This positioning failure continued. PTG was way too short the next quarter when the Wake punter had the wind, too deep when he was punting against the wind. Cost us 50 yards of field position easy. I have to think if we had a special teams coach those things would have been noticed and pointed out to the players. It's like the difference between a baseball coach moving his defenders around in the infield and outfield based on the hitter or leaving his players in the field to decide where to position themselves.
Our kick returns, both punt and kickoff, were terrible. First kickoff, Erv took at the 3 and ran directly into his blocker yet again and was downed at the 15. I love Erv and he's shown some swivel on runs and after catching a pass, but he can't and shouldn't be returning kickoffs. I've seen him run into his blockers time and time again now and he's also made bad decisions on whether to field and return the kick or down it in the endzone. I think he needs coaching both on not running into his blockers and on his decision whether to bring it out.
PTG got lucky on the punt he dropped by getting bailed out with a penalty halo violation call. At the game, Im4cuse and I were sure he had called for the fair catch, maybe just because it was so obvious he should have, but on tv he clearly didn't. Basically he caught he ball and was hit almost immediately and fumbled it. I don't think it was a halo violation, but the defender hit him so quick after the attempted catch, that it looked ugly and resulted in a flag. That is why they implemented the fair catch, buddy. Use it!
We didn't come close to getting any significant yards on kick returns. I can't wait to get Brisley Estime back there.
On the other side of the ball, we were equally bad and ineffective. Wake nearly blocked two punts. The one at the end of the first half was really close and we got lucky and got it off and downed it at the 2. Worked out ok, but bad punt protection has been a problem all year. Wake also had a couple of returns that looked like they might break it for a TD and consistently got significant return yards. Wake started out with better field position than we did almost all game, with the exception of their early long TD drive and the drive at the end of the first half where we downed it at the 2. We need to improve kick coverage fast.
All of those are coaching issues. Special teams wins and loses games, just as Virginia Tech. It can't be split up between all coaches generally without hurting us and that should be clear.
On the bright side, Cole Murphy is a legit FG kicker and it's taken us a while to find one. Great job Cole!
Defense
First drive three and out and the Wake starting QB was scared and ended up with a couple tipped passes and lots of pressure. Second drive-- the 92 yard TD-- more pressure early and again the Wake QB was playing scared with inaccurate passes. He then hit one over the middle and Welsh hits him pretty late for the personal foul and 15 yards. On tv, it was clear it was a good call. That actually seemed to settle down their QB and he then threw a nice pass for a long gain right after. He had a few more nice passes on the rest of that drive for first downs and they moved downfield methodically for the TD, again on a pretty decent TD pass.
After that long TD drive, Wake got nothing done. Total of 78 more yards through the remaining 3 1/2 quarters. There were actually three decently long runs in there and a whole lot of wasted plays.
Early on, we blitzed a lot less than normal. We got decent pressure with just 4, but again they moved the ball 92 yards for the TD. I would guess the staff was testing to see what kind of pressure we could get without blitzing for future game purposes before going back to it.
We dialed up the blitzes in the 2nd quarter and it paid off. In the second quarter Dyshawn Davis crushed Woolford with that backside blitz resulting in the Welsh INT for a TD and knocking Woolford out for the game. We then continued to blitz the second stringer and absolutely terrorized him. The second quarter play with two almost sacks and finally the intentional grounding was beautiful to watch. In the 3rd quarter Raymon crushed the backup QB and the fumble bounced right into Micah Robinson's hands for a second defensive TD.
Zaire Franklin got his name called a bunch in the 3rd and 4th quarters with great play. On one play in particular at the end of the 3rd, I noticed how fast he was chasing down their backup QB. Their QB was limping before that play so he wasn't really fast, but Franklin also was way faster than two other defenders also trying to chase him down.
Offense
AJ made a lot of decent passes. Still had a couple bad throws, but overall much, much more accurate than Hunt has been. Long got pressured and didn't get flustered. Another freshman mistake when he threw to a triple covered WR in the second quarter and it went for an incompletion. Little chance of success there but all the defenders were actually playing short and he could have lofted that ball over the top and completed it if he'd put some air under it. One planned run for Long, not like how many there were for Hunt, but Long is a much faster and better runner than Hunt is. Obviously due to his slender frame as compared to Hunt and the lack of back up options in particular today probably. Long had multiple chances to run for decent gains and didn't take them instead staying back and throwing decent passes. Both times he did run for big yards, the first TD and a decent first down gain, were after getting flushed out of the pocket. He looked great on those runs.
Mitch Kimble even got in at the end to hand it off 6 times. Man, why not let the kid throw one pass?
Online blocked pretty well all game for a banged up and shuffled unit. There was a little pressure on Long but not much.
McFarlane had a great game, mostly due to one long run of 86 yards. How did he possibly get run down and why did he not taper toward the sideline? Whatever, he doubled our run total with than one and finished with 114 on 10 runs on the day. He actually made good cuts and found holes on several runs. GMII got a couple chances and did nothing with them. I loved that kid last year and couldn't wait to see what he'd do this year. He hasn't done anything with his chances this year at all and it looks like McFarlane and Erv have both overtaken him. PTG did ok with his touches and AAM barely played.
Ishmael is a huge talent addition and changes games. He made some tough catches even in traffic knowing he'd pay the price for it. The best we've had here since well before Mike Williams IMHO.
Parris made a great one handed grab late, albeit for a loss that would have worked out better if he'd dropped it. It's good to see him involved in the offense a bit. He had two in the game as I remember. I'm still shocked they don't send the TE (Parris or Custis) on a vertical seem route, but these coaches know a lot more than I do about scheming football plays.
West got thrown to in the first quarter in the end zone on third down from the 15 and on TV I noticed it wasn't that bad a throw and could have been caught. West put one hand up and it glanced off. The throw was coming in fast, but wasn't out of reach and West could have had two hands on it and actually caught it. It looked from Long's looks around the field that West was the third target in the progression. It looked like West just didn't expect the throw maybe and gave it a really half-assed effort. I'd hate to think all WR don't expect any given ball to come to them due to not being primary receiver, but I kind of think that is what happened with West there.
Our WR are all blocking much better the last couple weeks. It may be that GMD has more time and is taking more time to teach the WR proper technique. Huge improvement and if that is why, good on GMD.
No easy catches dropped either. Morris should have caught the pass on the jet sweep at the 5 yard line and maybe would have scored on it, but he short armed it and didn't get a hand on it. On tv it was clear he heard footsteps. Long led him beautifully on it. West dropped what would have been a tough catch in the 3rd quarter along the sideline at about the 30 yardline that could have gone for a TD as well as the pass in the endzone referenced above. Given what I've seen so far, I would expect Ishmael to make both those West missed catches, which is a beautiful thing to have on offense.
The flag for a pick play TD on the next play was ridiculous. On TV it was clear Flemming didn't come near physical contact with the defender and actually the two defenders basically ran into each other. The announcer is a fool for saying they needed to be less obvious about it. Fantastic throw by Long too.
More false start Penalties early. Why is that still happening here? Shafer said in his interview at the end of the first half that it's a frosh QB with some young linemen filling in and just an issue with verbiage. What was the problem then leading up to the FSU game? We'll see. If it stops here, good. If not, it's systemic.
Wake apparently has a fifth year senior named Zach Allen. Watching it on tv, I cringed every time I heard his name.
Finally, there was a big waste of ten minutes in the 3rd quarter when West caught a ball over the middle then fumbled it after hitting the turf. On TV it was clearly a catch then fumble after hitting the turf. Wake fans were yelling pretty loud about it, but the funny thing is no Wake player touched West at any time in the play. Couldn't have been a fumble. Funniest thing was on tv watching the goofy coach with the headset on (Clawson I think) running on the field down the sideline with the Wake defender all the way to the endzone. Get the off the field!!!
Nice to meet many of you!
